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Guide to Server Side Includes (SSI) :

Server Side Includes (SSI) FAQ

This document is intended to teach you the ins and outs of Server Side Includes and how to use them on our servers. A general understanding of HTML is required.
What In The World Are Server Side Includes ?

Server Side Includes are a special set of commands that you can use inside HTML code when creating your website. They let you easily add dynamic elements to your pages such as the current date and time, last modified date, and a users IP address and browser type. Perhaps the most valuable use for SSI is the ability to include external HTML documents within your page.

SSI Basics (Using Server Side Includes)

In order to use SSI you must give your html files a .shtml extension instead of the regular .html or .htm extension. This tells our servers that you have SSI commands within your pages so we can handle them properly.

Once you have given your file a .shtml extension you can begin to use SSI commands. These commands are placed between special comment tags within your HTML code. A typical SSI command looks like this:  Remember that what your code looks like will be different from what is displayed on screen.

Does this seem confusing? Here is a list of SSI commands and what they look like on screen. You can simply copy and paste the command from here if you wish.

Browser Output (on screen)

SSI Command Code

The Current Date and Time:
Thursday, 08-Apr-2004 12:03:31 EDT The Current Date and Time:

The Previous Web Page:
http://www.jinfo.net/support The Previous Web Page:

Your IP Address:
80.137.99.6 Your IP Address:

Your Browser Type and OS:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98) Your Browser Type and OS:

This Web Page File Name:
ssifaq.shtml This Web Page File Name:

This Web Page File Size:
11K This Web Page File Size:

This Web Page Last Modified Date:
Wednesday, 03-Jan-2001 15:03:11 EST This Web Page Last Modified Date:

Lets Make A Date!

You can customize your date any way you please. This is accomplished by placing a special time format command directly in front of the Current Date and Time command that we looked at above. Lets take a look at a few examples:

If you want your date to look like this: Thu 08 Apr 04

If you want your date to look like this: Thursday April 08 2004

If you want your date to look like this: 04/08/04


Here is the entire list of Time Format codes:

Full Name Abbreviated Name
%A Full weekday name %a Abbreviated weekday name
%B Full month name %b Abbreviated month name
%Y Full year %y Abbreviated year
%D Date as mm/dd/yy %d Day of the month
%H Hour as 1 - 23 %I Hour as 1 - 12
%M Minutes 0 -60 %m Month of the year 01 - 12
%R Time as %H: %M %r Time as %I: %M: %S: %p
%p a.m. or p.m. %T Time as %H: %M: %S
%S Seconds as 0 - 60 %Z Time zone name

SSI Troubleshooting

Q - I have placed an SSI command within my HTML file but nothing happens.
A - Make sure the extension of your HTML file .shtml and not .html or .htm

Q - I keep getting the following error: [an error occurred while processing this directive
A - If you are trying to include a file make sure it is in the same directory as the main file. Also make sure you have spelled the filename correctly in your SSI command.

Q - Why can't I execute CGI (perl) scripts within my webpage using the #exec cgi command?
A - At this point Jinfo does not provide #exec-cgi functionality - although you can still use scripts from your CGI-BIN directory.

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